Lon..don…

Off to good ol’London…to go see Portis…be back on Monday…probably extremely jet lagged…I’ll try to write soon…Peace!!!

 

Discovering CAR-NI-VAL

So today is FAT TUESDAY!!! I wish I was in Rio de Janeiro right now partying my little booty away. But I am not. I am working on a rainy and not so cold but still cold enough for a Miami girl day. But in the spirit of Carnival…here is a quick recap.

Carnival started most probably around Medieval Times and it is suggested that it was adapted from the ancient Roman festival of the Saturnalia (Italian Carnival). You see, lent starts tomorrow. For the ones who do know what that is, lent is a period of 40 days in the Christian church where you are doing penance and are preparing for the Passion of Jesus. It is a period of sacrifice, prayer and technically (or in years past no partying). Since Christians are some of the biggest partiers I know, in order to get the party bug out of their system, they started Carnival so they could party their hearts away, and Wednesday they stroll into church to get their ashes and start the penance period. So Fat Tuesday is the culmination of days of partying, so you can sin as much as you can before you need to start acting like a good little boy or girl.

Rio de Janeiro

The world largest party today will be held in Rio de Janeiro…the twelve samba schools dance their way through the Sambadrome and compete for the grand prize. This year it has been quite interesting, there have traditional themes played out, as well as a representation of the 100 years of Japanese immigration in Brazil and much more…

New Orleans

Craziest party in the US today. Girls are notorious for showing off their boobs in exchange of colorful beads. But after all the recent events, Fat Tuesday is more of representation of the resiliency of the spirit of the city.

Barranquilla

Well, my own country has its own carnival. Not as world renown but still very fun. My brother was born in the middle of this carnival. Yes, yes, his mother was dancing one moment and the next she had a baby…lots of folklore, lots of dancing and lots of drinking….

Venice

Ohhh…the original carnival. It is known for the illustrious masks they wear. I haven’t been to it…but I do promise one day, I should be there.

Trinidad and Tobago

Some of my Trini friends tell me this carnival is amazingggggggggg….beautiful customs, great Caribbean music…and it is showcased in one of JayZ’s videos…

There are many more around the world…but these are just a few for you to know about…

 

Re-discovering the 777 and a whole lot of snow…

Yesterday, I came back from Miami. I woke up at 5am, since my flight was bright and early and I got ready and went to the airport. What a difference from a week ago. Everyone seemed to know where they were going, there weren’t any crazy lines anywhere, and everyone seemed civilized for the most part. I got to my gate on time. I boarded the plane and to my surprise…YES!!! My plane was a 777. I love this plane. I have flown on this plane several times, but I wasn’t aware that American Airlines redid the layout of all the seats. They made Coach Class have similar seats as the ones in First and Business Class. Each seat has their own area and they have three different reclining positions, including one where you lay flat as a bed. Each seat has their own area, so you are never in the way of anybody else. You also have your own TV that allows you to select what you want to watch or listen to on the radio.

My Super Amazing and a Little Messy Seat

A view of beautiful Miami from the plane

Beautiful puffy Florida clouds

It was early, and truly I was not in the mood to watch TV. As soon as we were up in the air, I reclined that baby, laid flat as if I was on my own bed and went to sleep. Truly, truly, I have never seen such a happy flight in my life. I don’t think anybody expected this plane and people were just smiling the whole time. Even the kids were happy because they had ample room to play without bothering their neighbors. It was truly a great experience.

Thick New England clouds

White Boston

Once I woke up and we landed in powdery white Boston, I quickly got off the plane and went over to my car. To find it buried in snow. My car is black, but at that given point it was white. Thankfully, I carry a scraper, took the snow of my windows, turned it on and let it warm up and started on my way.

Driving to Providence was funny. As I was driving, chunks of ice were flying off and hitting other cars. In response to the flying chunks there was a car free zone around my car. Truly they were evading me. I can’t blame them a lot of ice flew off. Then when I arrived at my work’s parking lot, the ice was almost all gone, and I had to brace the cold one more time…ahhhh…New England…thank you for the cold homecoming…hahahahaha

Driving to Providence

Ice on the hood of my car flying off

 

A Cultural Discovery of Los Angeles

When I went to Los Angeles this past November my dear friend J and I took the big city by surprise. We decided to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and the Ghetty Museum—all in one weekend.

First off—MOCA (Grand Avenue)

I am not a big fan of contemporary art. I will admit that. So this probably is not a fair review of this museum. The museum is just a few blocks away from the Walt Disney Concert Hall. As we walked in, we veered to the right and began our experience.

Given that J is also a cynic about modern art, we made a lot of jokes. The first exhibit we saw was by Cosima Von Bonin. Quoting MOCA, they describe Von Bonin as:

“One of the most influential and compelling artists working in Germany today, Cologne-based artist Cosima von Bonin (b. 1962, Mombasa, Kenya) has, over the last 15 years, worked in a wide range of media—including sculpture, photography, textile “paintings,” installation, performance, film, video, and music—often combined together in large-scale installations. Drawing freely from a broad range of sources—such as the work of other artists, popular and vernacular culture, television, fashion, and Hip-Hop and Techno music—her art explores these different forms of cultural expression in an open, fluid approach that embraces both relationships and contradictions.”

We also saw the works of Gordon Matta-Clark. MOCA describes him as “Gordon Matta-Clark: You Are the Measure is a full-scale retrospective of one of the key figures to emerge in the generation of artists that followed minimalism. During the brief but highly productive ten years that he worked as an artist, and even more so since his death at the age of 35, Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–7 has exerted a powerful fascination on artists and architects who know his work.”

Honestly, the one piece J and I liked the most were these photos taken of the electric plug at the museum. Let me describe it to you—there was this hallway with nothing on the walls. The floor was made of this plastic resembling a Lego. And in one of the walls there was an electric plug. So they took a picture of that, and then they took another picture of the same thing and they made an effect like you were looking into one of those mirrors were the image was shown repeatedly over and over, but here they only did it twice. Anyways, it was interesting to look at.

Like I said, I am not a big fan of modern art, but the one thing that I realized at MOCA is that beauty is everywhere. Even in the things that we don’t think are beautiful, there is a mysterious beauty in that. So it is up to us to really discover that beauty in our surroundings.

MOCA Museum
250 South Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90012
www.moca.org

Second stop: The Getty…

Now, the Getty Museum is located up on a hill next to the 405 highway that overlooks pretty much the whole city. On a clear day, the views are spectacular. On foggy day, like the day that we went, well, I was lucky to see J next to me. The fog was so thick…but I loved it regardless. The outside of the museum is just stunning to look at. Parking is at the bottom of the hill and you take a train that takes you to the entrance. Surrounding all the different buildings of the museum are a gorgeous array of gardens. This place is truly romantic. Perfect date place…

A view of the gardens and the Pacific Ocean covered by the thick Marine Layer fog

We saw two travelling exhibits at the Getty. The first one was “Medieval Treasures from the Cleveland Museum of Art”. The first thing that surprised me was that the Cleveland Museum of Art had such an extensive medieval collection, the second thing that surprised me was how comprehensive the collection actually was. This collection is actually renowned for its early Christian, Byzantine and medieval European art. It includes rare examples of decorative works of gold and silver, armor carved ivories, enamels, sculpture, paintings, and illuminated manuscripts from the third through the sixteenth centuries. The collection is organized by time periods and it is well explained. So even if you don’t purchase the audio tour headphones, you can still follow it. J and I were truly surprised and taken aback by this collection. It was impressive!!!

The second exhibit was a photography exhibit. I have this love for photography that it is all bottled up inside of me, and I’m sure one day it will come out. For now, I like to go see photo exhibits. Two photographers were showing their work. Edward Weston and Luc Delahaye.

Pretty pond at the Getty

Edward Weston was born in outside of Chicago in 1886. He lived a significant portion of his life Glendale (outside of LA). He embarked on an independent career in photography and became a very influential photographer to some of the greats like Ansel Adams. Many of his pictures were exhibited and he had a unique approach to angles.

The other photographer (and the one J and I really wanted to see) was Luc Delahaye. He is a photojournalist working for magazines such as Newsweek. Delahaye has photographed some of the most important events in recent history. I must say his exhibit was too small, but still delightful. All the prints were large and just told the story without even having to know the situation. My favorite piece was the “Registration of Internally Displaced People in Eastern Chad”. The image was taken in 2007 and it is 281.9 x 137 cm. The contrast between the dresses of the ladies and their skins and the facial expressions of pain in their faces it is just mind bottling. You can see their story without them talking to you. Truly inspirational. Loved it completely!!!

For a look at the exhibit please follow this link.

The Getty
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, California 90049
www.getty.edu

And so, in a city of Angels that so many like to judge as superficial in nature, there are many non superficial things to do. That is the thing about LA, in all its grandeur and monstrosity, there is something for everyone. And I mean everyone.

 

Discovering where to travel in 2008

Bogotá at sunset

So in the past few days I have been sort of uninspired to write anything meaningful. I mean I could have written about plenty of negative things, but I want to write about positive ones instead.

So today, while drinking my morning coffee I stumbled upon an article from the New York Times appropriately titled “The 53 Places to Go in 2008.”

Oh, how I like to dream about the places where I will go next year. The experiences, the good times, just the mere discovery of a new place excites me.

I included just the names below. A surprise was my own native city of Bogotá (#21).

Some places that I am interested in going to next year, Tunisia (#3), Maldives (#7), Puerto Vallarta (#12), Prague (#14), Quito (#15), Tuscany (#19) and Mozambique (#31) among others…

Who knows what this New Year will bring…but at least some interesting prospects are panning out…

The 53 Places to Go in 2008

1 LAOS
2 LISBON
3 TUNISIA
4. MAURITIUS
5. MID-BEACH, MIAMI
6. SOUTH BEACH, MIAMI
7. MALDIVES
8. DEATH VALLEY
9. COURCHEVEL
10. LIBYA
11. HVAR
12. PUERTO VALLARTA
13. SYLT
14. PRAGUE
15. QUITO
16. LIVERPOOL
17. MUNICH
18. IRAN
19. TUSCANY
20. ANGUILLA
21. BOGOTÁ
22. PLAYA BLANCA, PANAMA
23. ALEXANDRIA
24. MAZATLÁN
25. ST. LUCIA
26. OSLO
27. BUENOS AIRES
28. RIMINI, ITALY
29. MALAWI
30. ROATÁN
31. MOZAMBIQUE
32. KUWAIT CITY
33. VERBIER
34. LOMBOK
35. NORTHWEST PASSAGE
36. EASTER ISLAND
37. VIRGIN GORDA
38. NAMIBIA
39. SAN FRANCISCO
40. DETROIT
41. ITACARÉ, BRAZIL
42. KILIMANJARO
43. ALGERIA
44. SAN DIEGO
45. MÁLAGA
46. PUERTO PLATA
47. LONDON
48. VIETNAM
49. ESSAOUIRA
50. LAS VEGAS
51. BAROSSA VALLEY, AUSTRALIA
52. TOKAJ, HUNGARY
53. NEW YORK

 

Discovering a Thai Massage…

Hall leading to the massage rooms of Pho-Siam Thai Spa

On Sunday after a wonderful breakfast, my two friends and I were supposed to go on a hike. But it was overcast (Marine Layer was definitely thick that day) and it was a bit cold. Mers had mentioned we should go get Thai Massages, so I mentioned it to the boys and well they both agreed. So we took a nice little drive to Echo Park.

I don’t know what I thought about Thai Massages before I got to this place, but I was seriously surprised. As we walked in, we were greeted in a very nice lobby by some lovely Thai ladies. The mood of this place was definitely relaxing. You felt as if you were transported to some magical Thai palace. The light was dimmer. Everyone was soft spoken. The walls were lined with intricate wood art work.

After we checked in, we were escorted to the waiting area. It was nice and comforting. We waited for about 2 minutes when we were called in for our massage. As you walked in to the “massage area” you saw a long hall with dark wooden floors. Shoes were a no-no here. The “rooms” were separated by very ornate curtains. Each room had some shelves to the side when you walked in, then a thin mattress and two pillows. The curtains separated and made each room completely private. And from the ceiling there were two wooden beams with two ropes hanging from the wooden beams. You are instructed to take your clothes off (I left only my panties) and you had to wear this weird robe that really does not cover much of anything, except maybe your upper thighs and buttocks.

Once you are ready, you lay down on the mattress, and your massage lady comes in. She asked me if I wanted the massage “soft, medium or hard?” I said medium. A sheet was placed over my body and she started rubbing it with the sheet on, as if she was trying to warm up the muscles. After 5 to 10 minutes of that, she proceeded to lather me in eucalyptus scented oil. She massaged my entire body. I felt as if I was in heaven. Now the difference between the Thai massage and a regular massage is that as she massages certain parts of the body, she also incorporated her whole body. Not only did she use her hands, but she used her arms, feet and knees. She balanced her weight on my body using the ropes that hung from the wooden beams. Additionally, there were times she used what you would describe as yoga positions to bend some of my muscles. I can honestly say, my muscles released all the pressure they were carrying around. I felt like cupid bouncing off the clouds after. I had just an eternal smile.

Once we were done, I dressed, and went back to the lobby. My massage lady greeted me again and gave me some much needed water (water bottle included in the massage).

The best part—massage is only $40 for a full hour. Yep!!!

Here is the info:

Pho-Siam Thai Spa
1525 Pizarro Street
Los Angeles, CA 90026
213-484-8484
www.PhoSiam.com

 

Rediscovering Los Angeles…

I am in Los Angeles this week until Thursday, when I will fly to Miami so I can spend turkey day with the mother. I must confess I am happy to be here. I missed LA. I didn’t even realize how much I missed it until now. So I decided to compile a list of the top ten things that I missed about LA…here it goes…

1. I missed the radio stations—LA has some of the best radio stations in the country probably…KCRW, KROQ, 107.1…among others…even the Ryan Seacrest show is entertaining from time to time…

2. Breakfast places…hmmm….Miami, Providence, New York, Boston, all those cities have good breakfast places. But for some reason, LA has great breakfast places…there are tons of good places in Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach and Venice Beach to name a few

3. Santa Monica…need I say more…I just love Santa Monica…its gorgeous, the beach, the mountains…ahhhhhhh….

4. The Marine Layer…I never thought I would say this, but I like it…the nice cool moist breeze it brings in…I just missed it…

5. The fog…today I was driving amidst the thick fog and I just loved it…never seen such thick fog like here

6. The traffic!!! Can you believe that I am saying this??? Yes, well, in Providence I am in the car for maybe 5 to 10 minutes…it’s frustrating!!! I like being in my car for long periods of time…and that stop and go…lets me think about whatever…I missed it…

7. Downtown LA—the skyline…ahhh…I don’t know why but I have this fascination with LA’s skyline…I just love it…

8. TACOS!!!—love the tacos…King Taco is amazing…even Del Taco is pretty good…you can’t get that anywhere else…

9. The shopping!!! I know…so superficial…but I think every store in the world is here…it’s great…so many options…

10. There is always something to do…just as an example…you can go to breakfast, go on a hike, then go get a Thai massage, go to a museum and go to an amazing dinner all in one day…it’s great…there is always something going on…

 

Discovering Amigos with a little bit of Pacha…

On, November 10th, I went to New York City. The purpose of my trip: a concert. Pacha Massive and Los Amigos Invicibles were scheduled to play at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza in New York City. I bought my tickets and pretty much dragged my little cousin to go with me (he had never heard of these bands before).

Delicia Brasil

The night started with a sweet dinner at Delicia Brasil. A great little restaurant in the West Village. We were transported to some remote tropical Brazilian city just by tasting our food. It was glorious. Yummy yummy!!!

My dinner at Delicia Brasil

Delicia Brasil
322 W 11th St
New York, NY 10014
(212) 242-2002

Afterwards we hailed a cab, which dropped us conveniently a block away from the Fillmore. Let me tell you, walking a block when the wind is blowing feels like your bones will freeze and come off, it’s a major task. But we made it. Picked up our tickets at will call and entered the venue. Once you entered the theater there was a line for the coat check in. The bottom floor was decorated with dark red walls and couches. It gave it a nice loungy feel. As you went up the stairs, you could begin to see stage only after you passed several posters that highlighted who has played in the venue in the past. Such acts like Led Zeppelin, Arethra Franklin, Coldplay are among others. The Fillmore does not fit that many people. I would say around maybe 200 or so, which makes it a very intimate setting between you and the music.

Pachaaaaaaaa

Once Pacha started playing, oh chills went down my spine. The singer actually sounds exactly as in the CD. Actually, I take that back. She sounded better. My cousin described her as “the hottest Mexican girl ever”, I happen to describe her as a wonderfully talented and gorgeous singer from the exotic land of Mexico. Pacha Massive is mix of Afro-Cuban, Colombian and tropical rhythms mixed with some electro pop. All in all is an eclectic mix that transports you to a wonderfully peaceful planet. Needless to say, I enjoyed their performance very much. They played several of their songs from their most recent album “All Good Things” and they played my favorite song…My love…so I was the happiest girl at the Fillmore…

Invisibles…

Then Los Amigos Invicibles finally joined the stage. Oh, it was amazing. They played a nice mix between the old and new. Including Sexy, El Cuatro and Yo no se. The whole audience was electrified by their mixture of a danceable disco pop mixed with some merengue, salsa and samba. If you can imagine it, well…you will be dancing right now. Moving and shaking…”ven a mi, tomame, besame, uyyyyyyyyyyyy” . They played for around 1:45, and the audience did not get tired of dancing and jumping. Everybody shared the same energy. Even the cousin, who had no idea who they were, was dancing and having a great time. If you looked around people from all corners of the world were there. It was a great nice little evening…that…danced itself away….

 

Discovering Tayrona

I saw this article on the New York Times and I felt compelled to share…enjoy…

In Colombia, a War Zone Reclaims Its Past
Explorer: Tayrona National Park

CANTERING down a muddy path through Tayrona National Park in Colombia, we pulled our horses to a stop and listened as a high-pitched chant in an unfamiliar tongue filtered through the jungle. “That’s Lorenzo,” our guide told us, turning his horse off the trail and up a steep hill toward a solitary mud hut perched on the summit.

Moments later, a tiny, wizened man in a white smock, with stringy black hair that cascaded over his shoulders, emerged and squinted into the sunlight. He grasped our hands, introduced himself in broken Spanish and led us past a cooking fire into his grottolike home. A 1960s transistor radio dangled from a hook, along with some cast-iron pots and a pair of colorful knit saddlebags.

Lorenzo, a Kogui Indian from the adjacent Sierra Nevada mountain range, had recently moved his family into the park to take advantage of an explosion of tourism in this former war zone. Now he was selling the juice of the maracuyá fruit, and posing for photographs for tourists at 2,000 pesos, or about $1, a snap. “The government tried to throw us out, but they just gave up,” he said. “This land belonged to the Kogui long before it belonged to Colombia.”

Plunging down to the Caribbean Sea from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, one of the highest coastal mountain ranges in the world, Tayrona National Park has long been known to connoisseurs as one of the wildest and most beautiful corners of South America. Its roughly 58 square miles, carved out of the equatorial rain forest by the Colombian government in 1964, is among the most biologically diverse of any coastal zone in the Americas: dusky titi monkeys, red squirrels, collared peccaries, jaguars and 200 species of birds ranging from Caribbean toucans to red woodpeckers.

Below the mountains sprawl wild, palm-fringed beaches, framed by sea-sculptured boulders and connected by footpaths through the jungle. The area is studded with archaeological sites left by Tayrona’s indigenous tribes — the Koguis and the Arhuacos — who settled the region in pre-Columbian times.

Until recently, however, Tayrona was associated more with civil war and the narcotics trade than with tourism. For years the park and its environs were a battleground between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), one of the Western Hemisphere’s oldest Marxist guerrilla groups, and right-wing paramilitary groups, both of whom coveted the region as a base for cocaine processing and smuggling.

In 2003, armed gunmen kidnapped eight foreigners, during a raid inside the park. Three of Tayrona’s directors have been killed in recent years, most recently Marta Lucia Hernández, who was gunned down three and a half years ago, apparently because she resisted the demands of paramilitary groups to use the park as a cocaine-shipment point.

Now, however, Tayrona has been transformed. In late 2003, the Colombian president, Álvaro Uribe, began a military crackdown that defanged right-wing death squads, confined the FARC largely to the southern jungles and brought kidnappings down from about 3,000 to about 100 a year. With the Sierra Nevada now largely safe, the government has set about promoting Tayrona as a tourist paradise. Central to that effort was awarding the main tourism concession inside the park to Aviatur, the country’s largest travel agency.

The jewel of Aviatur’s operation is the $245-a-night Ecohabs resort, a complex of secluded huts built into the side of a jungled cliff overlooking the sea. “Before, it was just a patch of jungle with poorly maintained facilities,” said our taxi driver, Argemiro Toncel, of Tayrona. His wife is a chef at the Ecohabs. “It’s all so much better now.”
The jumping-off point for Tayrona is the coastal city of Santa Marta, Colombia’s oldest town, founded by the Spanish in 1525 and best known as the place where Simón Bolívar, the Latin American liberator, died. The photographer Carlos Villalon and I flew in one balmy September evening from Bogotá, and took a taxi 30 minutes along the coast to the city’s colonial quarter. The old part of town, anchored around a charming cobblestone plaza and a centuries-old cathedral, possesses a smattering of faded old hotels and apartment buildings with marble-tiled courtyards, fountains and other flourishes.

But the city, otherwise, is dilapidated, reminiscent of the most neglected parts of old Havana — but with Daewoo taxis instead of vintage 1940s and 1950s Chevrolets. The Colombian government has been talking for years about turning Santa Marta into “a new Cartagena”— the beautifully restored coastal city 113 miles west — but the renovation program has never gotten off the ground.

Santa Marta is worth a night’s stopover, if only for a visit to a piece of hallowed ground: Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino, the butterscotch yellow hacienda where Bolívar, desperately ill with tuberculosis, died on Dec. 17, 1830. The hacienda — a modest adobe villa set around an ocher-tiled courtyard — still has the canopied wooden bed where Bolívar drew his last breaths. Across the courtyard is the smoking chamber where Bolívar’s host and others retired for cigars so as not to torment Bolívar’s deteriorating lungs.

A large glass case displays the carriage that brought Bolívar to the hacienda, and across the magnificently landscaped grounds rises the Benitez clan’s original sugar cane processing plant. The only jarring note is a massive neo-Classical memorial built out of concrete on the 100th anniversary of the Liberator’s death — more suitable to Pyongyang, I thought, than to this sleepy Caribbean outpost.

After visiting Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino, we continued 20 miles east along the Troncal del Caribe, the two-lane coastal highway, to Tayrona National Park. At the park entrance, we turned off the tarmac road and followed a muddy path through the jungle toward the visitors’ center three miles away. Then, our driver plunged his taxi through a rain-swollen stream, sinking it to its axles in the mud. Each spin of the tires dug the car in deeper; nearly an hour passed before a ranger appeared with a tow rope and a Jeep Cherokee and dragged him out of the sludge.

It was our first indication that, despite the tourist influx over the last two years (at the season’s height, between Christmas and early February, the park can receive 1,500 visitors a day) Tayrona’s infrastructure remains maddeningly — or appealingly — underdeveloped.

At a thatched-roof hut in a dirt clearing, we hired horses for the 40-minute journey down a jungle trail to Arrecifes Beach. Black-faced, gray-maned titis darted through the dense mangrove forests that hemmed us in on both sides. The ground was alive with movement: violet crabs skittered in and out of holes in the earth, and armies of biting red ants carried tiny green morsels of the forest to their lairs. The trail leveled off, and we found ourselves in a grove of coconut palms, and beyond was a sweep of sand miles long and entirely deserted — with good reason. A sign warned that 200 people had drowned in its riptides since 1964.

At Arrecifes, we settled into comfortable beachside bungalows and dined barefoot at a fine outdoor restaurant on shrimp ceviche, grouper fillets and cold Colombian beer.

Tayrona’s swimming beaches lay farther west, reached by a trail that dips and climbs through the rain forest and over mounds of giant white boulders. We clambered over rough wooden bridges, ladders and staircases built into the rocks, offering splendid views of the sea, and arrived at a pair of horseshoe-shaped coves — the fabled beaches of El Cabo San Juan del Guía.

Jungle-covered hills rose precipitously over cream-colored strips of sand lined by 70-foot coconut palms — like something from the set of “Lost.” On this hot September afternoon, the only other visitors were a dozen young Israelis recently finished with their army service. We lazed on the beach and splashed in the aquamarine water until distant rumbles of thunder roused us from our reverie. With flashes of lightening on the horizon, we leapt from the sea and beat a retreat back toward Arrecifes.

We ended our visit to Tayrona with a stay at the Ecohabs, a dozen secluded luxury cabins meant to suggest traditional Kogui dwellings, built into the cliffs high above the Caribbean. Despite the name, the place evinces no special environmental consciousness — electricity is provided by a diesel generator — but the setting is extraordinary. A stone path switchbacked steeply above the sea, winding 200 feet to the highest bungalow, where we were booked for the night. Far below, the surf was thundering, and the sky over the jungled Sierra Nevada glowed peach and gold in the fading light.

I settled on a hammock on the stone base and listened to the waves crash- ing against the rocks. Not long ago, that very beach might well have been a launching point for boats laden with cocaine; but from this vantage point, Colombia’s war seemed a distant memory.

VISITOR INFORMATION

Carriers including Avianca and Delta fly from Kennedy Airport in New York to Bogotá with round-trip fares starting at around $640 for travel in January, according to a recent Web search. The flight time is slightly under six hours. Flights from Bogotá to Santa Marta take about an hour and a half and fares start at around 560,560 pesos, or about $280 at 2,015 pesos to the dollar. Domestic flights are best booked through Aviatur, Colombia’s largest travel agency (57-1-382-1616; www.aviatur.com).

Just in front of Santa Marta’s small terminal you’ll find plenty of taxis for the half-hour trip to Santa Marta, the jumping-off point for Tayrona National Park; expect to pay about 100,000 pesos ($50) for the one-way ride.

WHERE TO STAY AND EAT

The crumbling colonial neighborhood between the beachfront promenade and Santa Marta’s main cathedral contains a handful of hotels that are adequate for a night’s stay. Our choice was the Hotel Imperial Caribe (Calle 17, 3-96; 57-5-421-1556), a couple of blocks from the sea; the place has about a dozen spartan, clean rooms, with air-conditioning, for 40,000 pesos a night. In the same neighborhood you’ll also find the Hotel Mar y Mar (Calle 16, 1 C-25,; 57-5-423-4759).

The restaurant scene leaves much to be desired. We found a decent seafood place right off the sea front, Restaurante Ricky’s (Carrera 1, 17-05; 57-5-421-1564). Dinner for two cost 52,000 pesos.

Entry to Tayrona National Park costs 23,000 pesos; you can drive as far as the Visitors’ Center at Cañaveral, and then hire horses for 17,500 pesos each to take you down a muddy jungle path to Arrecifes Beach. There the best place to stay is the Cabañas, a dozen simple, comfortable two-story thatched roof bungalows that cost 220,000 pesos a night. There’s also a small camping area with room for 20 tents; maximum 100 people allowed on the site.

If you want to go further upscale, stay at the luxurious Ecohabs at Cañaveral, which is 495,000 pesos a night for lodging and breakfast; MasterCard and Visa accepted. Both the Cabañas and the Ecohabs have excellent seafood restaurants where you can get a fine meal — French wine, ceviche, grouper fillet — for about 60,000 pesos.

It costs roughly 125,000 pesos to hire a horse for the four-hour round-trip excursion from Arrecifes to Pueblito, a set of ancient Kogui Indian dwellings high up a mountain trail, with spectacular views of the sea.

During the busy season, which runs from the beginning of December to the end of February, as well as Easter, lodging in the park should be booked well in advance through Aviatur in Bogota (57-1-607-1500 for park reservations). During the off-season, it was easy to get a room on the spot. There are also numerous small inns outside of the park, but one should, if at all possible, arrange to stay within Tayrona’s borders.

 

Discovering los Palenqueros…

Today I spotted this article in the New York Times about a language that comes from one of the Coastal Regions in Colombia. What I love about my country is that it is extremely diverse in terms of topology, climates, colors, food and even languages…so below I included the article…enjoy!!!!

A dance troupe performed at an annual drum festival in San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia. The villagers speak what is thought to be the only Spanish-based Creole language in Latin America.

San Basilio de Palenque Journal
A Language, Not Quite Spanish, With African Echoes

SAN BASILIO DE PALENQUE, Colombia — The residents of this village, founded centuries ago by runaway slaves in the jungle of northern Colombia, eke out their survival from plots of manioc. Pigs wander through dirt roads. The occasional soldier on patrol peeks into houses made of straw, mud and cow dung.

On the surface it resembles any other impoverished Colombian village. But when adults here speak with one another, their language draws inspiration from as far away as the Congo River Basin in Africa. This peculiar speech has astonished linguists since they began studying it several decades ago.

The language is known up and down Colombia’s Caribbean coast as Palenquero and here simply as “lengua” — tongue. Theories about its origins vary, but one thing is certain: it survived for centuries in this small community, which is now struggling to keep it from perishing.

Today, fewer than half of the community’s 3,000 residents actively speak Palenquero, though many children and young adults can understand it and pronounce some phrases.

“Palenge a senda tielan ngombe ri nduse i betuaya,” Sebastián Salgado, 37, a teacher at the public school here, said before a classroom of teenage students on a recent Tuesday morning. (The sentence roughly translates as, “Palenque is the land of cattle, sweets and basic staples.”)

Palenquero is thought to be the only Spanish-based Creole language in Latin America. But its grammar is so different that Spanish speakers can understand almost nothing of it. Its closest relative may be Papiamento, spoken on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, which draws largely from Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch, linguists say. It is spoken only in this village and a handful of neighborhoods in cities where workers have migrated.

The survival of Palenquero points to the extraordinary resilience of San Basilio de Palenque, part of whose very name — Palenque — is the Spanish word for a fortified village of runaway slaves. Different from dozens of other palenques that were vanquished, this community has successfully fended off threats to its existence to this day.
Colonial references to its origins are scarce, but historians say that San Basilio de Palenque was probably settled sometime after revolts led by Benkos Biohó, a 17th-century African resistance leader who organized guerrilla attacks on the nearby port of Cartagena with fighters armed with stolen blunderbusses.

And while English-, French- and Dutch-based Creole languages are found in the Caribbean, the survival of one in the interior of Colombia has led some scholars to theorize that Palenquero may be the last remnant of a Spanish-based lingua franca once used widely by slaves throughout Latin America.

Palenquero was strongly influenced by the Kikongo language of Congo and Angola, and by Portuguese, the language of traders who brought African slaves to Cartagena in the 17th century. Kikongo-derived words like ngombe (cattle) and ngubá (peanut) remain in use here today.

Advocates for keeping Palenquero alive face an uphill struggle. The isolation that once shielded the language from the outside world has come to an end. Once three days by mule to the coast, the journey to Cartagena now takes two hours by bus on a bumpy dirt road.

Electricity arrived in the 1970s as a government gift in recognition of Antonio Cervantes, better known as Kid Pambelé, a Colombian world boxing titleholder who was born here. With electricity came radio and television. The schoolhouse, named in honor of Biohó, has an Internet connection now.

But Palenqueros, as the community’s residents call themselves, say the biggest threat to their language’s survival comes from direct contact with outsiders. Many here have had to venture to nearby banana plantations or cities for work, and then found themselves ostracized because of the way they spoke.

“We were subject to scorn because of our tongue,” said Concepción Hernández Navarro, 72, who survives by farming yams, peanuts and corn.
Only two of Ms. Hernández’s eight children live here; five are in Cartagena and one moved as far away as Caracas, drawn by Venezuela’s oil boom. “We have always been poor here,” she said in an interview in front of her modest house, “but our poverty has grown worse.”

If there is one blessing to this impoverishment, it may be that Colombia’s long internal war has largely been fought over spoils in other places, allowing teachers here to toil uninterrupted at reviving Palenquero since classes were introduced in the late 1980s.

Undaunted by the prospect of Palenquero’s disappearing after centuries of use, Rutsely Simarra Obeso, a linguist who was born here and lives in Cartagena, is compiling a lexicon. Others are assembling a dictionary of Palenquero to be used in the school.

The defenders of Palenquero view their struggle as a continuation of other battles. “Our ancestors survived capture in Africa, the passage by ship to Cartagena and were strong enough to escape and live on their own for centuries,” said Mr. Salgado, the schoolteacher.

“We are the strongest of the strongest,” he continued. “No matter what happens, our language will live on within us.”